"Citizen scientists" join climate research in U.S.

"Citizen scientists" have volunteered some use of their personal computer time to help researchers create one of the most detailed, high resolution simulations of weather in the Western United States.

"When you have 30,000 modern laptop computers at work, you can transcend even what a supercomputer can do," said Philip Mote, director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute at Oregon State University, about the result published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

It is part of an ongoing project known as Weather@Home, which is a group of regional climate modelling experiments within climateprediction.net, now being supported by Microsoft Corp., the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the California Energy Commission, the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

"With this analysis we have 140,000 one-year simulations that show all of the impacts that mountains, valleys, coasts and other aspects of terrain can have on local weather," said Mote, lead author on the study. "We can drill into local areas, ask more specific questions about management implications, and understand the physical and biological climate changes in the West in a way never before possible."

It is hailed as a step forward for scientifically sound, societally relevant climate science.

The sheer number of simulations tends to improve accuracy and reduce the uncertainty associated with this type of computer analysis, experts say. And the high resolution makes it possible to better consider the multiple climate forces at work, such as coastal breezes, fog, cold air in valleys, sunlight being reflected off snow, and vegetation that ranges from wet, coastal rain forests to ice-covered mountains, and arid scrublands within a comparatively short distance.

Although more accurate than previous simulations, improvements are necessary for Weather@Home, the researchers say, noting in their report that the approach will help improve future predictions of regional climate, and the social awareness has "matured to the point that numerous public agencies, businesses and investors are asking detailed questions about the future impacts of climate change." Endit